[Meta Hiring Process] Meta recruiters request references before submitting feedback file to review committee

It's a promising sign if they're asking for references! It certainly helps if current Meta employees advocate for you, but you also should not be penalized if not. (Mandating that all new employees know current employees would be bad for DEI.)

Instead of offering a reference who works at Meta, you should be able to provide the names of other people you've worked with. I'd recommend giving the names of at least one other industry person who has worked in a Big Tech environment, which would be comparable to Meta.

Two very relevant threads here:

• Can you suggest me any names from Meta to put as references?
• Meta recruiter asking for internal references - What does this mean?

I got into Meta without having any current references at the company - It's definitely not a requirement. Though I'm sure if you had 10 high-performing E5+ engineers in Meta who explicitly vouch for you, that would help quite a bit. But don't worry if that number is 0 😄